JFK’s $9.5B Art Terminal: Where Air Travel Will Meet Culture
JFK Airport’s Terminal One promises to blend aviation and contemporary art, with major installations planned by Yinka Shonibare, Tomás Saraceno, Firelei Báez, and others.
By 2030, travelers landing at New York’s JFK won’t just walk through customs — they’ll walk through a museum. The $9.5 billion New Terminal One is shaping up as the city’s most ambitious art hub, carrying the pulse of New York’s culture straight into the airways.
Seven major artists — Yinka Shonibare, Tomás Saraceno, Julie Curtiss, Firelei Báez, Kelly Akashi, Ilana Savdie, and Woody De Othello — are building monumental, site-specific installations across the sprawling terminal. Curated under the theme “We Travel Under One Sky” by Culture Corps, the artworks are set to greet 23 million international travelers every year.
Shonibare’s kaleidoscopic kites will float above, paying tribute to Queens’ diverse migration stories. Saraceno’s Cloud Cities will suspend light and air in iridescent webs. Báez reimagines maps of New York as underwater mythologies. Curtiss turns the city’s appetite — from bagels to yellow cabs — into a mosaic of hands holding icons. Even the luggage carousels will become sculpture gardens under De Othello’s surreal touch.
The Port Authority calls it a “world-class gateway.” But it’s more than civic pride — it’s a cultural handshake, a reminder that New York doesn’t just welcome the world, it mirrors it. As flights connect continents, the art inside this terminal connects people — proof that airports can be more than waiting rooms. They can be stories in motion.
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